This debut medieval romance sees a traumatized teen regain her passion for life, with the help of a man haunted by his own tragic past.
In 1122, in the kingdom of Blinth, a young teen runs in panic through the woods before finally collapsing. She awakens next to a stag that tells her that the men following her are friendly and that she should go with them in order to heal the cuts on her feet. Tristam, the leader of the hunting party, carries her to King Stefan’s castle. However, once her fever breaks, she finds herself unable to speak or remember anything about her past. Tristam names her Grace and takes a personal interest in her recovery. He’s still healing as well, after losing his wife and daughter in the woods years ago, and he grows closer to the foreign girl at the risk of his own reputation. Eventually, Grace starts communicating through sign language, going to school, and enjoying close friendships inside and outside the castle. But both she and Tristam sense a tragedy in her past that she’s blocked out completely. Will their deepening bond help or hinder her full recovery? Arnold sets her incredibly layered narrative in a Christian kingdom while offering mystery, romance and a parable on the power of healing. The chapters alternate between Tristam’s and Grace’s first-person accounts, and the author emphasizes the sense of touch throughout, characterized by tender dignity: “I go to him,” says Grace, “and wrap him in my arms as best I can. I stroke his hair. I kiss his brow.” However, this is also a story about healing from sexual abuse, and Arnold handles the traumatic subject with exceptional realism, particularly when she depicts Grace’s oscillation between isolation and acceptance. Splendid secondary characters, such as Becca and Geneva, keep the tale from becoming too dour. Grace’s headmaster provides moments of wisdom, as when she tells Grace in a moment of doubt, “[M]any times those who are different are indeed our brightest.” Plenty of court intrigue and a stunning twist at the end could bring readers back for a sequel.
A glowing, potent fantasy tale for teens and adults.
Pub Date: July 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936447-06-0
Page Count: 318
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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